An Overview of the Worldwide Rise and Expansion of Home Education Homeschooling

Abstract

This chapter outlines the current situation about homeschooling across the world today. It highlights its enormous growth over the last 40 or 50 years, since its reintroduction in the USA and the impact that has had on the world homeschooling movement. It describes the contested outcomes of home education, including the evidence that students' academic, social, and emotional outcomes are higher while also providing a solid basis for ‘graduates' of home education to experience success in adulthood. Theorizing the roots of this success, the chapter looks at the measures of success and the theoretical bases of the success of the mainstream schooled and explores how the features that make a successful graduate of mainstream schools are naturally and almost exclusively present in the home education setting, Finally, it considers how the current turn against home education and suggests how future research might be useful to counter these negative discourses about the practice while understanding this growing cohort of children across the world today.